The term “Greenwash” is quite well known, meaning situations where companies disingenuously promote their products as environmentally friendly when they aren’t, or over-sell what are really quite modest environmental benefits. Wikipedia defines the term as follows:
Greenwashing (green whitewash) is the practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly, such as by presenting cost cuts as reductions in use of resources. It is a deceptive use of green PR or green marketing. The term green sheen has similarly been used to describe organizations that attempt to show that they are adopting practices beneficial to the environment.
An interesting phenomenon that I have seen in transport circles, particularly in Auckland, is what could be called “public transport-wash”, or “PT-wash” for short. It is when road projects have tiny or pointless little supposed public transport improvements tacked onto them in order to help “sell” them to the general public. Road engineers and other people who generally promote big roading projects realise that what people really want is better public transport, so that’s why they add on these supposed public transport benefits that most of the time don’t really exist, or at best are extremely minor compared to the project as a whole.
A classic example of “PT-wash” is the proposed widening of State Highway 16. As noted in the NZ Herald last year, around $860 million is going to be spent on widening SH16 between St Lukes and Westgate over the next decade. In that original article you see the following paragraph:
Bus shoulder lanes would also be extended over the full distance, boosting an existing “patchwork” of peak-hour priority sections.
At the Waterview Connection Expo I attended on Saturday, there was a bit more information on the extent of these bus shoulder lanes. Somewhat unsurprisingly they will continue to abruptly end at each on-ramp, off-ramp or over-bridge, and in general seemed to be a continuation of the “patchwork” of priority lanes that exists at the moment. In reality, we’re probably going to merely end up with slightly wider shoulder lanes that are a bit smoother – and that’s it. Yet the project is being sold to the public as helping to improve public transport. AMETI is another classic example of “PT-wash” in my opinion. A whole pile of massive road upgrades that justifies itself on the basis of adding a few bus-lanes, when really what’s needed is a whole new rail corridor.
I may seem to be overly grumpy and exasperated here, but I really do think that we need to keep an eye out for “PT-washing”, to ensure that we’re not being taken for a ride here. If a project does nothing significant to help public transport then we shouldn’t be tricked into thinking that it does.
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The same thing is happening in Wellington with the Basin Reserve improvements. NZTA are not only selling it as a faster route, but they say it will improve public transport. I’m yet to work out how things will change in the long term? The flyover will only make travel times faster, meaning more people will drive. I get the assumption that they believe if there is more capacity on the road in the short term, the buses will move quicker past the Basin. But this kind of thinking lacks long term vision.
I presume that NZTA are required to make some kind of minor effort when it comes to public transport, walking and cycling when building expensive roading infrastructure. I guess its something they do to try and justify these projects.
Brent, I thought that buses in Wellington bypassed the Basin anyway, going via the old tram tunnel if they’re headed to the airport?
Another example “PT-wash” is the claim that the Waterview Connection is good for public transport because it will free up space on arterial roads for more public transport. Building a motorway that doesn’t even follow a “desire-line” for public transport and won’t even have bus lanes or shoulders will really have a huge public transport benefit…. it would only make sense if NZTA was funding the construction of bus lanes along Great North Road, Mt Albert Road, New North Road and so forth. Instead they’re wriggling out of that and trying to do the least amount of mitigation possible.
Over here in Melbourne, we had the classic. The authority building the Eastlink Tollway claimed that in the ‘corridor’ they were putting up some station awnings at Noble Park. Get that – a new 30km long motorway corridor, and a nearby railway station gets some new awnings!
We do tend to get this a lot. My personal favourite is when i read the words “future proofed for light rail”
Cam – 9 times out of 10 its bad, however the latest light rail line in Portland uses an old Busway designation for significant parts that was build way back in the 70’s, so its not always all bad.
I wonder what PT-washing will go on with the Holiday Highway though.
Joyce says a lot; as new roads will move faster, cars will be producing less emissions on their journeys, which is wrong on so many levels it is not funny but I guess Joe Average goes, “oh yeah that makes sense”…
Big companies are getting really bad about this, I watch CNN a lot and have seen power companies, electronic companies, paper milling companies and even oil companies advertising how “green” they are…
Joyce is, as always, somewhat right. Travelling with a car from a to b without congestion en route is probably better for the environment than doing the same with lots of stops and starts in a traffic jam (correct me if I am wrong).
But of course the mere act of de-congesting a road frees it up for more use. Including people jumping off the sometimes frustrating public transport system that the past governments (not only National) have let decline. So really it is not sustainable at all.
[ Read the title of the post as “PT bashing” at first. So much for my optimism 😉 ]
They have a series of three such underpasses planned for Melbourne’s horrific Hoddle St, which is six to eight lanes of traffic soaked nightmare. They are currently PT-washing that project on the grounds that it is needed to speed up buses in the corridor and trams crossing it! The main reason for the slow buses is the perfunctory bus lanes are compromised by allowing left turning traffic to use them as a turning lane, and with a lot of side streets the bus lanes are more or less a piece of fiction. The main reason for slow trams is a lack of any traffic light priority for them. I.e. in both cases the public transport is held up by cars, so the answer is to build underpasses to increase the car carrying capacity of the road of course. Total PT wash.
On greenwashing, I loved to hate the BP petrol station on Khyber Pass with a solar panel on top that powered 20% of the lighting on site (wowsers!). They had a huge electronic sign showing how many watt-hours of energy the panel produced (sweet FA by the way, but they had it in the base unit so the number looked huge), plus a billboard claiming to be New Zealand’s first solar powered pertrol station.
Many of Wellington buses go around the Basin and to Hospital/Newtown and Island Bay. The route past the basin would be the best route for a light rail to run to the airport as it will include the hospital and major development area around Adelaide Road. The best way to separate PT from the road here would be to make it go underneath the cricket pitch.
I wouldn’t be surprised if One News did a special report of companies portraying their so called green images to get increase business. Would be good to have a way of measuring these practices. If a company wants to show a green image, maybe the CEO should start bicycling to work, which would hopefully start a chain reaction throughout that organization.
Heh, seems like the term is catching on.
Max, I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that the least congested cities generally are those where people drive the furtherest and most often. So they generally have the highest level of CO2 emissions per capita from transport.
Brent, yeah the Basin is a pretty tricky bottleneck for transport in Wellington. Surely it’d be wise to remove public transport from that bottleneck so that one doesn’t have to spend masses on tunnelling?